Artists in Their Gardens is a book for the gardener who loves the garden as a means of self-expression. In the ten gardens described, each of us will find things we love, and perhaps things which disturb us. I love the austerity of potter Ann HIrondelle's garden, the zaniness of Lewis and Little's work, the majesty of Lee Kelly's monuments. I could never live with the kitsch of Leter and Barton, yet it is fascinating to see their artistic vision as developed in plants and plastic. The sections on The Artist's Eye helped me see how to translate these visions to my own garden. After all, in my own garden, I am the artist! This book encourages me to be daring in shaping my own garden vision.

The author was a journalist who made a point of noting key thoughts when he came upon them while reading. Thus, the book is mostly one person's presentation of what he read during his life, which is fine.

In general, quote books can be unsatisfying since they present small, out-of-context snippets of ideas. That was expected. The issue here turned out to be the title.

"Great thoughts" generally suggests ideas that have stood the test of time and been found to be true. This book devotes 8.5 pages to quotes from Freud, about as many to Marx, Lenin, Nietzsche .... you get the point. While these people have certainly affected Western civilization, at least recently, they have also been proven to be totally wrong, often at tremendous cost to the civilization they have experimented upon.

Can erroneous thoughts be "great thoughts"? If you think so, this book will be fine for you. Me, it drives up the wall.

The author deliberately excludes quotes from religious figures, assessing there is so much already out there, it's redundant. This seems to undercut the idea of illuminating the underlying ideas of civilization, but I guess Marx and Lenin need more exposure.

In skipping and out, as quote books require, I found little from those who opposed such ideas, repeated in this book of "greats", even long before they enslaved billions and collapsed the societies who adopted them. The author rather grudgingly admits conservatism is part of western tradition, but that's about it. It is significant the book was picked for update/revision after the collapse of the the Soviet Union. Do "great" thoughts need revision? These do.

Basically, if the book had been called "Influential Ideas of Modern Material Humanism", there would be no complaint here.

A much better book of short anecdotes might be "Condemned to Repeat It: The Philosopher Who Flunked Life and Other Great Lessons From History"

This book was originally put together by a very successful journalist who had access to the most famous people of the times. Interestingly, various editions are, or at least, have been available in either author or subject categorized.

I really like the quotes Seldes selected and this is one of the 30 or 40 books (from among the 400+ quote books I own) I use most (in the subject listed format) to dig up quotes for topics I am researching.

It's not one of the top five I'd buy, but if you see one one sale, grab it. It's a nice one to add to a quotation collection or to give as a gift. ALso, the price is better than many others, and it's another book you can often get for just a few dollars at a used book shop or through one of the used book web vendors.

The Great Thoughts was the first quote book that I used for writing cases in Lincoln Douglas debate in High School. I found that the quotations were thorough and wide-ranging. The Great Thoughts contains many useful authors from all time periods and all races. I have used quotations from Mahatma Ghandi to Plato. Another added bonus is that the book comes with longer quotations. A longer quote insures that a reader won't take a quote out of context. I've used The Great Thoughts for Debate, for school papers, and for my job as a writer at my school newspaper. I reccommend the Great Thoughts without any hesitations.

It troubles me to no end that books that are to be taken as scholarly would stoop to using FAKE photographs....in this case none other than the famously fake tornado on the cover....to sell the books. I wish I knew if a) the author, being well-versed in the topic he has written about, KNOWS the photo is fake and is trying to hype his product or; b) he is ignorant of such? I am not sure which is worse? Until consumers cite their disgust with such ploys we are doomed to not knowing what is real and what is FAKE even in so-called non-fiction or "scientific" text. The publisher should be ashamed.

"Braving the Elements" is a breathtaking trek from the Ice Age to the 'Old World' of Native American North America, from the European invasion of the 'New World' through colonial times(both Jefferson and Washington kept daily weather journals and Franklin 'discovered' Nor'easters); from Lewis and Clark's journals to the hottest decade (1980s) and year (1995) on record to the Storm of the Century (1993) - the virtual history of North America all through the window of weather.

From unprediactable weather in the western U.S. (half the continental US is "classified as deficient in moisture" or practically desert!) to the greenhouse effect; from lethal storms and the people who try to predict them, all aspects of weather are covered.

It is an engaging and hard-to-put-down read which weaves facts, history and science into a really fascinating book. Campers, naturalists, history and weather buffs will all enjoy this engaging story.

Every other day we get some weather disaster on cnn then forget it. This book gives the larger picture, over time: the patterns and changes, as well as a fascinating history of how weather was viewed and recorded. You'll find lots more here than you would think.

The Pros: Some very useful and solid advice about starting and running a reading group, including how to recruit members, how to conduct your meetings, and how to keep things running smoothly. The chapter on how to handle problem people and situations is especially good. Their advice is based on their personal experience with reading groups they've been in, as well as the experiences of the many people they interviewed while doing research for the book. This is good, solid, well-tested information on how to start and maintain a successful and enjoyable book group.

The Cons: Their book suggestions are, to be kind, a wee bit politically correct. A theme that runs throughout the book is "Lesbians love book groups, " and many of their book choices reflect the interests of that particular demographic. Their introductory chapters on the history of book groups is history as viewed through the lenses of 20th century American feminism. The fact that they refer to Mortimer Adler's choices for the great books program as "a parade of dead white males," pretty much lets you know where they're coming from. Their book choices focused almost exclusively on 20th century novels, and they basically ignored the "parade of Dead white males" they seem to care little for. In other words, they leave out 99% of the books that have been the most influential in shaping western thought and culture in the past 2000 years. Their recommendations for books of poetry fare no better, being limited again to mostly 20th century, and mostly female, poets.

In defense of their book choices, though, they note that the great majority of book groups, over 90% if I remember correctly, and composed entirely of women. They also note that books that stir up the most controversy are the ones that make the best reading group books. Given those two facts, their suggested reading lists make sense. If your reading interests go a bit deeper, however, or you already know the kind of books your group will be pursuing, their lists of suggested books will be of little use.

My suggestion: buy the book for the excellent advice on how to start and maintain a reading group. Look elsewhere, say Fadiman's "The New Lifetime Reading Plan," for suggestions on which books to read.

A very well edited book that does indeed list a good number of thought-provoking books... I was a little baffled by the non-inclusiveness of the work (most of the authors listed are white males, which does not accurately reflect my personal literary tendencies). Overall a good book that I would nonethless recommend.

I started a reading group about 6 months ago. I started with two friends and recruited the rest of the group over the Internet. This was a great guide and probably prevented me from making a lot of mistakes. I'd never even been in a reading group, so I had no idea there was so much to consider in forming and sustaining a group. Our group is going great, we're still a bit too large, but I'm sure we'll dwindle a bit over this first year. If you're considering starting a group, I suggest reading this book to help you along. Have fun!!

David Laskin's journalistic and scatter-shot approach to this group of significant American intellectuals is disappointing. The emphasis is on anecdotes rather than motives, psychology, ideas, or works created. The book is lightly documented, and if you already know anything about the individual writers or the movements they were part of, you'll look in vain for new insights. It's certainly readable, but because it treats the subjects with so little context, the reader wonders after a bit why one should care about these folk, who sound more like a bunch of dysfunctional celebrities of the nineties than the defining minds of a complex and fascinating historical era.

It's not initially evident how Laskin chose these particular authors. Wilson, McCarthy, Tate, Stafford, Woodburn, Arendt. The common thread seems to have been their alliance to the Partisan Review, but politics was never the prime impetus in their lives. They might be best described as political arrivistes in a variety of left leaning shades. None of their work resorted, thankfully, to rigid polemics, and in later forms showed a decided skepticism of all dogma. They could not be described as a literary school, even with a vague commitment to a never fully articulated 'modernism'. These poets, novelists and social commentators had individual interests and styles, with no common overarching credo. Lowell's Catholicism somehow coexists with Wilson's avowed Marxism, with little tangible conflict. What you do find is a writer's clique, which at times seemed only an excuse to engage in an exuberant circus of multiple marriages, affairs, heavy drinking and bourgeois tastes. These are consummate social clubbers, actuated by a discriminating sense of membership. A club founded, no doubt, on prodigious writing talent, but seemingly searching more for the legitimacy of membership than an invigorating intellectual culture.

The style of the book is gossipy but energetic. Its aspirations are more to the interplay of personalities than the literary output. Laskin still manages a coherent critique of the major works, but his intent does not provide for much depth to the analysis. The times form an interesting period in American letters, still very much in the thrall of the late 19th Century romantic idealism, but in a society on the verge of massive social change, for better or worse. All aspired to stable marriage, but systematically destroyed relationships through petty cruelties and mutual infidelity. Laskin focuses primarily on the women and their relationships with their husbands or lovers. They desperately sought independent identities yet were inculcated with traditional ideas of roles. Their revolutionary zeal muted by conventional expectations. Simon De Beavoir's ground breaking treatise on feminism, The Second Sex, could still bring howls of derision and charges of flagrant denial of a natural order from them. They lamented shrillness and superficial icons of the bourgeoning women's movement. Unsurprisingly, this all produced a cynical edge in their writing. Laskin paints a vivid picture of the New York Literary scene of the 30's and 40's, arrogantly dismissive of American customs, and yet forever defined by the mores of the society against which they rebelled. It is not always a pretty picture, as a dimly perceived hypocrisy tinges their lives, along with the attendant profligacy, alcoholism, spousal abuse, and manic depression so seemingly entrenched in literary lifestyles. The book, though, is an insightful social looking glass, a page turner, and a good companion to his subject's writings.

It's hard now to imagine a world in which anyone paid this kind of attention to celebrities who weren't in the movies and couldn't dribble. But I found this book a delightful, if not particularly self-improving romp through the gossip of a vanished age.

The drinking! The seriousness about ideas especially politics! The promiscuity! The casualness with which poets and "poor" writers acquire antique homes in Connecticut and Maine, to say nothing of duplex apartments in mid-town New York!

The author, who writes with a female sensibility under a male name, does a very good job of portraying the frightening way in which physical and emotional abuse were accepted as just part of a normal marriage in the period before the emergence of true Feminism in the 1970s. His book reminds me of why I can never share Generation X's nostalgia for the 1950s. It was a terrible time to be female. Partisans makes it clear that even the female intellectual superstars portrayed in its pages had to put up with far more suffereing in terms of abuse, sexual infidelity, and having to do all the housework even when you were a world famous (woman) writer than any one of us would tolerate today.

Definitely worth reading!